As theatres heave with Christmas audiences, we celebrate the top 50 folk who have helped light up the West End and beyond this year

1 Nicholas Hytner, artistic director, National Theatre

Hytner programmed some superb, varied productions (The White Guard, Welcome
to Thebes, After the Dance, Earthquakes in London) and
directed one or two of them himself (London Assurance, Rory Kinnear
in Hamlet). The Travelex £10 season remains one of the great bargains
of British theatre, the NT Live broadcasts continue to spread the theatre’s
work across the world, and pretty much every show has a sense of event about
it. It’s not all gold — how could it be? — but seven years into the job,
Hytner continues to give us a National Theatre